I absolutely love the Christmas/Yule/Winter Holiday season, and one of my favorite parts of the season is sending and receiving holiday cards. I kind of go a bit nuts hanging all my cards around doorframes and displaying them nicely. I may also have spreadsheets for all the people I plan on sending cards to. (Though really that’s just for efficiency sake as mail merge is your friend for printing address labels when sending a lot of cards.)

If you would like to receive a card, I’ve created this handy form for privately collecting mailing information. Yes, I know it’s only November but it takes me a while to write out all the cards. Obviously, this information will not be shared, though it will likely be used in following years for my own list of people to send cards to. Also, you don’t have to use your real name if you don’t want to. I will address the card to whatever name you prefer, as long as the post office will take it. (For international mail, you do need a first and last name.)read more

A place to learn about the craft of writing through panels, workshops, and discussions

So, what is GRL?

A giant slumber party with all the friends you never knew you had

A place to meet authors you’ve never heard of and buy their books

A grand game of “get every author to sign their books.”

A wild party.

There are three levels of attendees at GRL: featured author, supporting author, and attendee. The spots for authors are limited and there’s a publishing requirement for both. (Featured authors must have 3 books currently published and available for sale, supporting authors need 1.) A lot of newer authors (like myself) go as attendees but there are also a lot of attendees who are readers, and that’s what the focus of this event is on. It’s not a place to shine a spotlight on famous authors but rather a place for readers to connect with authors and fellow readers over the books that they love.read more

The Good Doctor

Doogie Howser + House + Autism. It’s nice to see more TV shows featuring autistic characters in a normal way, not as victims or villains but as people. While I can’t speak to how true the portrayal of the main character’s autism is, the pilot is full of compelling characters with an interesting story. While the board at Shaun Murphy’s (Freddie Highmore, aka Norman Bates from the Bates Motel TV series) new hospital debates whether to allow a surgical resident with autism, Shaun saves a young boy’s life at the airport using MacGyver’d surgical tools. In standard trope fashion, the video of Shaun’s miraculous save makes it online and the board has to accept him, at least temporarily, or face bad publicity.read more

I was at Anime Next a few weeks ago. The con itself was pretty decent, but I had a memorable interaction with one of the vendors in the Dealer’s Room that stuck with me as an example of how not to do business. I had been going around the various booths looking for a stuffed animal for my sister, and potentially one or two for myself. (You can never have too many stuffed animals.) There was a Chinese couple running a large corner booth that had some adorable stuffed animals. I’d already spoken to the wife, who’d greeted me when I walked up. There was a cow keychain that I was going to get for my friend Matan and I was going through their larger plushes debating which one I wanted to get for myself… until the husband butted in.read more

I’ve started out on an interesting new venture: Patreon. I come from a mostly fanfiction background, so the idea of taking money for my work is still a little new and weird for me, but I do plan to eventually maybe transition into writing full-time so this is a sort of second step in that direction. (The first step, of course, being the anthologies I’ve been published in.) All of the money actually goes toward production costs, so it’s not like the money is really going to me, but maybe one day some might.read more